Unknown Armies Halloween Jam 2025 Feedback

 

It's time for another Unknown Armies 3e jam review. The event ran from October 7th through October 23rd and the specifications can be found here. The event received fifteen submissions. The ones shaded blue are my own.

PROVENDER: A Parka Worn Backwards

thefirsttinghewasawareofwashisownhandexploringthecontoursofthebonesinsidethemaninfrontofhimandallhecouldfeelwasajoythathnowhewasaliveandadesiretoknowthefaceofhisfatherbutthefacewasobscuredandhisfathercasthimawayintothedarkandemptyspaceabove

PROVENDER: From These Dreams You Don't Wake Up

Marc rolled his mousewheel and chewed through the backscroll since he last visited. It had been hell finding the page. There was a chance every time that the server had been nuked and his account with it. 

Not much discussion. The usual debate about whether it was the real thing. It was an interesting discussion but it wasn't the point. The current streak was still twelve nights in a row, but the guy had stopped posting.

Enough dicking around. Pinned messages.

He fullscreened the webm and it played automatically.

PROVENDER: Dharmapala

 
PhD student Lara “Lagartija” Schliemann came to Buckshaw Island with her UNLP biology class to catalog the island’s unique plants and animals. Buckshaw is sometimes called Ultima Thule for its position one island south of Thule, in the Sandwich archipelago between Argentina and Antarctica. The last update from expedition mentioned a “crashed submarine” found in a sea cave. Ominous glowing slime smeared in frozen streaks around the site prompted the professor to evacuate the cavern. He had a devil of a time stopping the rambunctious doctoral students from sneaking back to take pictures and snatch “artifacts”.

Months later, search and rescue ships found their shelters and equipment intact but abandoned. There was no sign of the researchers or the mysterious cave they found. The search was called off due to encroaching ice which would have trapped Naval Prefecture rescue team on the island. The Argentine government blamed the UK for the disappearance.

The second group to disappear was a shipload of salvagers from Ushuaia. They never told anyone where they were going, afraid someone would loot the site before them.

 

PROVENDER: Three Rites of Death

Mowry

 

After the sun fell down the view was nonexistent. Black mountains, black sky, black clouds, black stars. I was exhausted after the plane and the shuttle and the endless forest service roads giving way to private gravel driveways. All I wanted to do was sleep. But the festivities had already begun and I didn't want anyone narcing to my boss that I had skipped out on the first training. Better to merge with the crowd and slip away once I'd been counted present. 

 

The venue was a handsome alpine lodge, mutilated with modern decor that gave it the feel of a hotel conference room. The facilitators wore slippery yellow robes like raincoats. They smiled like you do when someone takes too long in front of you in line. One shoved a table and folded the area rug back in place with a foot. It had been misaligned. The other listened at the door. It was performative because we could all hear it.

 

bam bam bam bambambam bam bam bambambam bam bam

 

I couldn't tell if the heavy wooden element at chest level was a handle or a bar to hold the door shut from the outside. He pulled on it and it opened without a sound.

 

It took me a second to understand what I was looking at. Bodies packed so tight they couldn't possibly move but moving nonetheless. Thrashing and stomping. Carried forward and being carried in turn. A swirling dark pattern to fill the windowless and almost unlit space. The whirling ant mill implied an eye of the storm at the center but promised annihilation to anyone who tried to swim through the mass and reach it.

  

There was a little light from somewhere. There must have been or I couldn't see it. There was enough that I recognized someone in the crowd. I remembered her from the ride up, the only person in the van who listened attentively to the concierge's excited lecture. Something about a dolmen beneath the lodge, preserved in its original condition in a high ceilinged chamber beneath the original structure and still enclosed today a century later. She had gone up ahead of me and now she flashed before my gaze. Bruised face slick with drool, bedroom eyes half lidded. She snapped away into the human current and I was back on my uncle's farm. Watching him slam the emergency stop a moment after the farmhand disappeared beneath the grain. Like it could reverse the arc. Bear the man up out of the silo. Un-collapse his lungs.

I turned to yell at the raincoats. To do something. Pull the fire alarm. Call a time out. Like hell was I going in there.

I didn’t see who shoved me.

Unknown Armies Pashacon Jam Results

Another Unknown Armies jam wrapped a couple weeks ago. Parameters will be familiar to anyone who's been following this series. Let's see how we did.

 

Unknown Armies 2025 Jamuary Jam Results

Ken Currie

A couple months ago Unknown Armies fan server user Cliomancer ran another Unknown Armies jam. It had similar rules to previous jams, with a list of prompts and a short wordcount limit.

John Tynes Ain't Dead Contest Results

Komoda

The John Tynes Isn't Dead Contest just wrapped. Submitters had a couple months to write submissions based on entries to the Unnatural Phenomena page, an Unknown Armies fansite dating back to the early 2000s (and mirroring content from other, now defunct fan pages).

 

The jam was initiated after Atlas Games allowed the Statosphere community content program for Unknown Armies 3e to die by neglect, ignoring DrivethruRPG's communications on the subject and subsequent fan communications asking about the status of the program. UA3 was basically abandoned anyway, but the disappearance of Statosphere through bureaucratic incompetence added insult to injury.

SWAP MEAT Jam Results

Following up on Zomnocon, the 9/11 Jam and last year's Halloween event, the Unknown Armies SWAP MEAT Jam wrapped a couple weeks ago. Participants had 333 to 1,296.3 words to write about at least one of the following prompts.

• Man vs Technology, Nature vs Civilization, Grief and Loss 
• Genre: Folk Horror (1800s to Modern Day), Urban Horror, Corporate Horror 
• Inspiration: The Witches Sabbath by Francis Goya, The Dust Bowl, Faustian Bargains 
• What you hear about Occult Underground during Halloween

We got six entries this time. The Unknown Armies fan community is not large and has been demoralized in recent months by Atlas Games inadvertently shuttering the Statosphere community content program. But what are you gonna do?

Unknown Armies 9/11 Jam Results

Results from the Unknown Armies 9/11 jam. Submissions were limited to 3,333 words, set some time in 2001 to 2008, and linked to a series of prompts chosen by the contest organizer.

Zomnocon 2 Feedback

Zomner ran an Unknown Armies jam last week. It was supposed to just go for a weekend but he got tied up before closing submissions, so we got a whole week to send entries. The word count was 2,333 and stat blocks didn't count against the total. Submitters got to choose any of the following prompts 

• Film Noir (1940s genre of film)
• Inspired by a song
• Nepotism
• Old friends
• Positive change over negative
• Something important has been stolen
• Green thumb

There were fourteen submissions to the jam.

 

2023 Unknown Armies Halloween Jam Results

The 2023 Unknown Armies Halloween Jam is over! 

Participants had one week and 1333 words to write whatever they wanted for Unknown Armies 3rd edition, provided it fit one or more of the six prompts. We got fourteen entries, plus three examples by me and three more I wrote during the week. The most popular prompt was Subway (seven entries) and the least popular was Non American Occult Underworld (three entries).

 

Thank you to everyone who submitted. I've posted my feedback on the submissions under the cut.